


DAWBBC

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Friendship, Gen, Military Backstory, POV Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson is a Gift, more than sidekicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 08:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20927162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: (1) Sam Wilson and Curtis Hoyle have too much in common not to be friends; (2) The founding of the Dumb-Ass White Boy Babysitter's Club.





	1. Battle Buddies

Sam met Curtis Hoyle in a hotel conference room in Reston, where they were both attending an all-day training session as part of the credentialing process to become peer counselors. They ended up in the same workgroup and realized that they had more in common than just the desire to help their fellow vets and a thorough knowledge of Grandmaster Flash’s early work. Curtis had been a SAR corpsman, which was really just a wetter version of [what Sam had done as a PJ](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/145219395539/sam-wilson-actual-badass), so they had plenty of notes to compare, plus the batshit stories of EMS training and dangling out of helos in hot and sandy places that came out in the hotel bar after they’d finished up for the day.

It wasn’t until they piled into a cab for the ride back to the District that Sam realized that Curtis had a prosthetic leg. Which is why, when combined with the Navy stuff and a couple of beers, Curtis was entered into his phone as Pegleg.

It didn’t take long for them to become ‘battle buddies’ for the rest of the training cycle – having someone to snark to during the too-mushy lectures on empathy made them bearable – and then plain buddies once it was done. Sam was maybe not done mourning Reilly and Hoyle was definitely still mourning his missing leg and the life he’d had before. They could both use a new friend who didn’t carry that baggage.

* * *

“I met Captain America this morning.”

Curtis texted back: “And?”

Curtis lived in New York now – he’d taken a federal government job to pay his bills, so he’d gone from HM1 to GS10 – but they kept in contact and still saw each other often enough.

“He’s got a lot more personality in person,” Sam settled on, because “he’s the kind of guy you’d call a sarcastic asshole and mean it in a nice way” would require more explaining than he would want to do over texting. And “he looks like those guys who come to the meetings looking so fragile you’re afraid they’ll shatter if they sit down wrong” would be a breach of confidence because Curtis would know exactly what Sam meant without any explaining at all.

Sam doesn’t expect to strike up a friendship with Steve Rogers, either, but he knows what a man in need of a friend looks like and if Steve won’t sit in on a session, Sam’ll do his best to sneak one in by other means.

* * *

“Your boy’s America’s Most Wanted.”

By the time Sam got the text, he’d already harbored two fugitives and was planning a break-in at a military installation to steal government property. By the time he had time to answer it, he’d had a pretty big part in taking down the global political structure and his 'boy’ was in surgery after getting worked over and shot by his dead-for-seventy-years childhood best friend, so he just went ahead and answered the text wondering if that had been him flying around a Helicarrier.

Curtis got most of the whole story a few weeks later at a fancypants bar on St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem; Sam was visiting his cousin Denise after dropping Steve off at Stark Tower to recover from his physical wounds and inflict some more emotional ones by finding out everything he could about the hellscape nightmare that had been Bucky Barnes’s twentieth century.

They agreed it was all very fucked up and that they had no real idea of what would happen once the purging and finger-pointing parts of the program were over. And then they moved on to other things, like whether Sam should go back to school for his MSW or quit the VA by setting fire to it and all about Curtis’s adventures in Bushwick looking over an abandoned factory one of his war buddies had bought on spec while in Afghanistan. Billy Russo was out now and in the process of moving back to New York and Curtis could not believe that Russo had either bought the place or that he wanted to live in it.

“It looks like Detroit, inside and out,” Curtis said with a shake of his head. “Billy thinks he’s just gonna grab a bivvy sack and rack out until he figures out what he’s going to do with the place. He’ll probably try it, too. And then Maria Castle will find out and she’ll drag his skinny ass out of there and he’ll sleep in the spare bedroom like he usually does.”

Sam had not met Maria Castle, or her husband Frank, but Curtis always talked about them both with the kind of fondness that meant family. Frank was still in, but Maria had moved their family back to New York because the constant deployments had left her feeling isolated in Jacksonville. Curtis occasionally helped the Castles out, “but only with stuff like Lisa’s science fair project. Maria’s got herself squared away just fine.”

Billy Russo, upon encounter, was exactly the kind of guy who’d buy a dilapidated factory in Brooklyn without seeing it first. He was that guy in your unit who’d be telling you what kinds of awesome shit he was going to get up to once he got out, how he was never gonna be a lifer because he was going to get rich on the outside. Sam liked him despite that because he was perfectly aware of the fact that he sounded like That Guy and took Curtis’s giving him the business about it with a smile.

* * *

By the time Russo sold that factory in Bushwick to a developer for eight figures before the decimal point, Sam was an Avenger. Or officially an Avenger, since he’d sorta-kinda been getting sucked in by Steve and then Tony Stark for a while now.

It had started with Sam running the occasional Bucky Barnes-related errand and then escalated when, after a year of acquaintanceship , Stark suddenly and loudly realized that Sam had been (a) a Falcon pilot and (b) that guy flying around in the stolen Falcon gear on HYDRA Day. At which point Stark also suddenly and loudly realized that he wanted to build Sam new wings. (“Better wings, much better wings. Won’t get torn off by Rogers’s angry friends.” “Banner or Barnes?” “Both! You can find Barnes and Bruce’ll love to help out.” “I’m pretty sure I can’t and he won’t.”)

Flying around on his new wings for shits and giggles turned into flying around on his new wings for world protection after Ultron. Curtis very patiently explained to Sam that he was absolutely the very last person to realize that this was what he wanted to do, that he’d been growing restless even before Stark had given the sky back to him.

“He’s right,” Frank Castle agreed with a shrug as they sat in the Castle backyard watching Lisa and Frankie try to kill themselves on a slip-and-slide fueled by the garden hose, Frank’s version of minding the children. “Your 'fuck no!’s to Billy were becoming 'nah, man’ and even I could figure out that you were just hoping for a better offer. ”

Russo had started a military contracting firm and, every time he saw Sam, he’d suggest coming to work for him. Sam had qualms about becoming a mercenary, despite knowing several guys from his PJ days who’d crossed over and were making money hand over first for doing stuff like protecting NGOs doing good work in bad places. Anvil was doing similar – Russo said it wasn’t the lack of connections keeping him from contracting out to stage coups in banana republics – and Sam’s medical skill set was worth at least twice as much as what a former grunt could make.

The Avengers were technically the most ostentatious private military force on the planet, but they weren’t Anvil writ large. There was a difference in motive and mission and Sam, whose entire adult life had been one long series of taking not-so-great-paying jobs because he wanted to do good and help others, had been stuck on the distinction of that difference. And now Curtis – and Frank – were telling him that everyone else had seen it first.

In hindsight, that would probably have explained why Steve’s entire pitch to join comprised of him showing up at Sam’s front door with a six-pack of craft beer and a tablet loaded with the blueprints for a new Avengers headquarters up in Utica and asking him how many weeks notice he had to give at work. He’d given Steve crap for thinking he’d put out on a first date, but maybe it had been more like they’d been going steady for a while and Steve was looking to make it Facebook official.

Sam had significantly more trouble picking out a code name; Curtis and Steve were both fonts of awful suggestions and Steve’s sometimes came with costume designs. “You’re being assholes in stereo,” he told them.

The Falcon debuted on a raid of a HYDRA cell in Guatemala. It wasn’t the best name, although Sam really didn’t like the idea of any name but his own, and he’d gotten comfortable with the simplicity of it and the nod to its origins. First one to make a bird joke got something dropped on them, though.


	2. Charter Member

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhodey's got the paperwork

James Rhodes is the charter member of the Dumb-Ass White Boy Babysitter’s Club because Tony Stark at sixteen is pretty much the poster child of dumb-ass white boys. And Tony will spend the next twenty-five years fighting all comers for his title, so Rhodey’s had plenty of time to write up the actual charter.

Sam Wilson earns his membership courtesy of Steve Rogers. Sam’s also Air Force, even if he’s on the reserve side of the house, and he also hates the New England Patriots, so there’s no need to amend the charter at all. And Steve is certainly not going to be toning it down any time soon, so extending membership seems a good move because Sam’s gonna need the alcohol and empathy.

The charter does eventually require amending because Sam wants to nominate Curtis Hoyle for membership. Curtis also hates the Pats, but he’s Navy. Even worse, he’s FMF Navy, so he voluntarily chose to hang out with Marines. But Sam insists that this is actually exactly _why _Curtis needs membership – Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children is an entire cult of dumb-ass white boys. Rhodey’s not sure about whether they should start lowering standards like this, but Sam points out that Curtis’s two dumb-asses are _lieutenants_ and even he has to admit that that really probably does make up for the rest. (Much later on, after everything, this will almost be funny.)

The DAWBBC meets in New York on a regularly irregular schedule, preferably at Tony’s so that there’s plenty of high-quality free booze. JARVIS is surprisingly eager to go along with it, but then again JARVIS has watched Tony be Tony for a very long time.


End file.
